Taylor Swift Trademarks: Every Word & Symbol She Owns, From ‘Swiftie’ to ‘Taylor’s Version’
Billboard has collected and contextualized a running list of more than 150 trademark registrations held by the pop superstar.
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Taylor Swift is fiercely protective of her intellectual property. The world learned this during the pop superstar’s well-publicized pursuit to own her music by re-recording — then eventually buying back — her back catalog masters. Behind the scenes, Swift has also spent the last two decades quietly building a formidable trademark portfolio.
In addition to now owning all of her music, Swift has more than 150 trademarks, giving her ownership over various uses of her name, initials, most of her album titles, various song titles, lyrics and numerous words and phrases including “Swiftie,” “Swiftmas” and “Taylor’s Version.” She even has a trademark on the names of her cats.
It’s common for artists to file legal protections for words associated with their work; stars like Beyoncé, Justin Bieber and Bad Bunny also hold large trademark portfolios. This means that when someone else tries to use an artist’s name or work without permission, the artist has the weight of the law behind them to stop it. Indeed, Swift’s legal team has taken advantage of these enforcement rights over the years to crack down on everything from counterfeit merch to a “Swift Home” bedding line.
Swift does not own every trademark she’s ever applied for. To the contrary, her team has put in more than 300 submissions to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office over the course of her career — more than double the number of trademarks she now owns. Some of these include marks she once registered but later allowed to expire once their use ran out, like “The 1989 World Tour”.
Other filings have been abandoned by Swift’s team before the completion of the lengthy Trademark Office review process, which can often take years and make a trademark obsolete by the time approval rolls around. Such was the case for “The Swift Life,” the title of a Swift-themed app that had already been discontinued when it reached the final trademark registration phrase.
During this review process, the Trademark Office vets a trademark application for similarities to any pre-existing registrations. This has led the office to reject some of Swift’s marks over the years. A requested mark for her 2019 song “The Archer,” for example, was determined to be too similar to one already owned by the indie label Archer Records. Similarly, Swift’s recent attempt to trademark The Life of a Showgirl for her record-smashing latest album was preliminarily denied in November because Las Vegas performer Maren Wade already owns the phrase “Confessions of a Showgirl.”
Months later, Wade filed a highly publicized trademark infringement lawsuit against Swift. The star’s lawyers are fighting those claims, which they call “absurd” and “meritless,” and say they remain confident that the Trademark Office will ultimately allow them to register a mark of their own for The Life of a Showgirl. “It is widely known that Ms. Swift’s fanbase is a dedicated and informed set of consumers,” her attorneys wrote in their first response to the lawsuit. “Their attention to detail is legendary… There is no chance they would be confused between plaintiff’s cabaret shows and Ms. Swift’s album and related promotional merchandise.”
While this Showgirl fight remains ongoing, Swift’s lawyers are also continuing to pursue ownership of a host of other trademarks. The singer has pending applications to trademark phrases like “Female Rage: The Musical” (Swift’s description of her set for The Tortured Poets Department during the Eras Tour), as well as “Taylor Swift Taylor’s Version” and “Reputation Taylor’s Version” (signs of hope, perhaps, for Swifties clamoring for the release of her remaining re-records). She also recently filed to trademark her voice and likeness, an unusual legal maneuver that is untested but likely aimed at combatting artificial intelligence deepfakes.
Below, Billboard has collected and contextualized a running list of all the trademarks Swift currently owns. This story will update as her IP portfolio evolves.
